People that are upset about electron should consider it’s not:
Electron App vs Wonderful Fully Supported Native Linux Application
The reality is that your choice is largely:
Electron App vs No App (maybe running their windows app in wine if you can get that to work)
It’s not like companies are going to go build a native linux app but electron got in their way. It was always electron or no support.
So if you like the app, remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something. There’s no trophy you get at the end of your life for “most cumulative ram left idle”
I think proprietary Electron apps better run in browser anyway because of trackers that you can disable via extensions.
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A lot of the time, the alternative would be a website running in the browser.
I’d prefer that. One firefox instance can easily run 10 big fat websites while using like 6GB of RAM. 10 electron apps on the other hand? 32GB RAM won’t be enough.
Have fun updating those Electron
Yeah, I’d rather a website
So if you like the app, remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something. There’s no trophy you get at the end of your life for “most cumulative ram left idle”
This is a damn homicide lmao
Running electron apps becomes a genuine ram issue when running heavy ram workloads like running heavily modded games
And very true. 32gb is 99 dollars Australia pesos, 16 is about 70 percent that. What a waste to let it sit around.
The issue is not RAM, it is how slow it performs.
I’ve never had a problem with the speed of an electron app be it steam or Spotify.
Well, there’s also Tauri which requires slightly more testing since you actually use the device’s built-in browser, so there might be differences. The upside is a much smaller bundle size, quick start-up times and often less RAM usage than with Electron.
There’s no trophy you get at the end of your life for “most cumulative ram left idle”
Some people like to use more than 1 app you know.
Also, RAM is never ever idle. It is used as filesystem cache when not used by programs thus speeding up read accesses significantly.
Honestly even with more than 1 application open it shouldn’t be an issue. Maybe with a really old computer, but anything modern really should handle an electron app just fine
remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something.
Remember that house you paid for doesn’t provide value unless you fill it with elephant shit.
That’s consumerism. Another equally shitty statement: your liver doesn’t provide value unless it dies from all toxins in the world.
So if you like the app, remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something.
It could be doing so much more if you hadn’t gone with Electron you fuck
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From the comments that have mentioned the efficient programming languages, my guess is there’s a bunch of devs in here that never got past the “c++ is hard!” stage.
The first time I saw an office app launch in my browser, I was both impressed that they got excel to work in a browser and appalled that they wanted excel to work in a browser at the same time. And I’ll admit that it does perform well considering it’s running in a fucking browser, but I’ll still launch the native app any time I actually want to work with a file that’s opened in the browser.
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Doesn’t Qt provide native, cross platform UI? I agree with your post though.
What about laptop battery life? More CPU usage = less battery life. WHY DOES NO ONE GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BATTERY LIFE???
The single most reason I switched from Spotify to Apple Music is that I was sick of seeing the Spotify macOS app at the top of the “High Battery Usage” page on Activity Monitor. I also actually noticed less battery life. Fuck Electron. I avoid apps made in it like the plague.
Maybe we should make that a trophy
Even native apps usually use cross-platform toolkits which usually have very good Linux support. E.g. Qt, .NET, WxWidgets, GTK (maybe)
We are aware, and we’d take “no app” any day, thank you.
You know that “no app” and “not using the app” is the exact same user experience right? So you can just not use the app and stop complaining about it existing.
“Not using the app” means instead of developing a real one, I’m being pointed at an abomination.
Idk who you think you’re speaking for, but I don’t think it’s as many people as you think lol.
Besides an electron app you don’t use and no app are literally the same thing, so why choose nothing?
Electron app I don’t use is less chances to get a normal app.
This might be a hot take but I’ve noticed some complicated electron apps are faster than some simple native apps. The striking example to me is how Vs code runs better and has a lower startup time than the stock Windows 11 File manager.
A well written electron app is better than a poorly written native app sometimes.
I mean, sure, but:
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The Windows File Manager is really just awful in that regard. You can get alternative file managers that start up in a fraction of that time, with more features.
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Startup time isn’t really the worst of it. RAM usage is worse. And if a program uses lots of RAM, it will still appear quite performant. But it makes everything else on your system slower.
There’s also the added CPU overhead from using JavaScript for everything to contend with.
As long as the program is not bloated, JavaScript can be fast. Unfortunately that’s not the case with most programs.
especially if they’re proprietary…
file manager opens instantly.
genuinely curious, I have a shitton of networked drives and at least 7 volumes on this locally, file manager has always popped open ready to go at a click or hotkey.
Are you using the Windows 10 file manager? That one is so much faster than the new Windows 11 one.
TIL
Can you recommend some third party windows file managers?
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Stock file manager has an okay UI (tabs are super nice) but is kinda slow, especially on battery.
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I tried explorer++ but its UI is clunky and it’s only slightly faster than the stock file manager.
I’ve been using Double Commander for years and I love it, but the UI takes some getting used to (and the default settings aren’t great).
Well, the file manager I use on Linux, Dolphin, has an experimental Windows version.
When I learned of that a few years ago, I gave it a shot on Windows and I prefered it to File Explorer, but it’s not like I compared it to other offerings or anything like that.I do think that’s the best file manager on Linux and most features were working on Windows back then, so it’s not unlikely either, that it is by far the best offering for Windows. But it could also be a buggy mess. I wouldn’t know…
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I mean sure once you start getting big enough, you’d probably be bundling all the features of chromium anyways, and any extra bloat is meaningless. Chromium and thus electron are extremely well optimized so if you are using the full feature set it will be fast.
But please stop using vscode as the benchmark electron app. It is not comparable. No other application in history has as large of a talent pool as vscode and It’s possible none ever will either.
That’s because all the important bits in VSCode are reimplemented in C++
You can use C++ for web technology instead of JavaScript? I’m taking a class in C++ right now so I’d be happy to swap janky JavaScript for pedantic but speedy C++ in new projects.
It’s getting there!
VSCode is a desktop app, hence using real languages is easy. For websites there is webassembly. Try this: https://www.rust-lang.org/what/wasm
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What does Ctrl shift I do (I’m not at my computer and I don’t have any electron apps installed)
opens chromiums dev tools
Does it really have to? Vscode is built on top of it, I don’t think it’s ever opened chromium dev tools for the app (maybe I’m wrong?)
For VSCode, click Help -> Toggle Developer Tools
Not very found of them either but it’s hard to do without them, mater wise.
it’s hard to do without them
Just load the wrapped website in a browser.
Or even better, encourage native apps.
Or even better, steal their source code. 😈
That’s not better at all.
You mean native Windows and macOS apps? Because that’s what you’ll get, mostly.
Or Linux, yes.
That works for some apps but not anything that needs access to the filesystem and/or devices. Things like VSCode or mod managers, etc.
That works for some apps but not anything that needs access to the filesystem and/or devices.
Granting some application with a bundled ancient and insecure Electron build is insanity.
Things like VSCode
Luckily there are plenty of native source code editors out there, for example Kate.
Granting some application with a bundled ancient and insecure Electron build is insanity.
Granting some application with a bundled ancient and insecure library of any kind is bad. That is not a problem exclusive to Electron it applies to static builds of any application ever made.
Luckily there are plenty of native source code editors out there, for example Kate.
Okay but that’s not the point. You said, “Just load the wrapped website in a browser.” Some apps won’t function like that. The fact that alternatives exist is irrelevant to what I replied to.
Okay but that’s not the point. You said, “Just load the wrapped website in a browser.”
I replied to “it’s hard to do without them”. So yeah, opening wrapped websites in a browser for most Electron apps and using native alternatives for the rest is totally feasible and absolutely not beside the point.
Yeah, it’s feasible to do that. And? My point was that you can’t just rip out the web portion of an app and always expect it to work in a browser. That’s it. What you said is irrelevant in the sense that it has no effect on whether the web portion can run in a browser or not.
I guess my pun was lost on your computer mind too, I’ll go back talking to my physics pals
@HenriVolney @Oha I don’t use a single Electron app currently. I might consider VS Code though.
I guess my pun got lost in everybody’s logics. Poor me, unable to connect with my fellow lemmys.
You can get back to the first picture real quickly by Uninstalling after Ctrl-Shift-I.
so “sudo rm -r / --no-preserve-root” ?
Just “rm -r / --no-preserve-root” because professionals give all their accounts superuser privileges by default.
professionals run everything on root
Professionals boot kernel in singleuser mode
I’ll take shitty electron apps over winforms any day of the week.
I guess I should be happy that I’ve never heard of winforms?
You mean F12?
also works
Dude, if it doesn’t hog memory then what’s the problem?
It kinda do though. VSCode, without a project open has 10 processes running and uses over a half gig of ram. I like VSCode to be clear. I also like discord but it’s just a chat app and apparently needs a half gig itself and 6 processes.
You should come over to vim. It only takes 12 months of intense training and an additional 3 years of super glueing random rc file configs together before it works how you want it to
Yeah, but once it’s all setup, you get to see all your coworkers roll their eyes when they see you use vim at every job from that point on
So, all worth it in the end 👌
Also, I’ve saved at least $5 over the last decade from wear and tear on mice
I hope they’ll find a way to run all those applications in one browser. Like basically having a browser with multiple tabs but getting treated like seperate sandboxxed apps.
Browser already do this. At least on Linux all browsers use namespaces(containers) for tabs
Does tauri do this?
if
As a full stack web developer, I FUCKING LOVE Electron. I can make really cool desktop apps, and you can deal with it.
Time to murder you in front of all Linux people
you can usually tell by the size (and ram usage while just sitting there)
The problem is that even Microsoft choose to use Electron when they built Teams. MS got loads of developers and Teams is really a big product in terms of users.
and vscode
VSC is an interesting case because they opted not to use any JS frameworks for performance
💀 writing a text editor in electron and worrying about performance is wild /hj
It’s quick and doesn’t lag at all, even with the couple dozen plugins I have installed. Compare that to Atom (or whatever it’s called now) with zero plugins.
i cant relate sadly. ive got a decent computer but vscode still takes a while to load (with plugins). neovim on the other hand takes a split second to open, and has never crashed on me, even with the equivilent of my vscode plugins
Lets write an OS in Electron and go to March. Maybe start using the right tool for the right job. If i only know how to build with lego, I dont build a real house with lego, instead i learn how to do it right.
Where Linux
Does Firefox support desktop PWAs?
Not natively, but there’s an addon that works really well:
https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox
Some assembly required.
Why don’t you like ctrl-shift-i?
ctrl+shift+i brings up the inspect tool you’ll find in Chrome. Which Electron is based on.
And that’s a problem?
No, it’s just a confirmation that the app is indeed built on electron, and not native.
And is that a problem? Depends.
